Niveus Media did not invent Media Center PCs, those all-in-one devices built upon the Windows operating system, which work as DVD players, music and video servers, digital video recorders, online portals, and even complete home automation devices. Niveus didn’t even invent the high-end Media Center—a version of the product with refined aesthetics and reference-quality audio and video.

Okoro Media Systems offers perhaps the most PC-like Media Centers of the bunch. They still build rock-solid devices built to deliver a unified and uncompromised audiovisual experience, but they offer the sort of flexibility you might expect from a more traditional online PC outlet: your choice of video cards and hard drives and TV tuners and network cards—even alternatives to Windows, if that's what you're looking for.

With a 500 GB hard drive, the Moxi HD DVR is good for about 75 hours of HD recording, and includes dual tuners and Multi-stream CableCard support for encrypted premium channels and video-on-demand. The Moxi features an E-SATA port for an expansion external hard drive, and will support up to two additional gigabytes of external storage, upping the total HD hours of recording capacity to about 375, which should be enough for even the most die-hard couch potato.

Each disc placed in the Blu-ray Disc Changer is scanned for metadata and cover art, which is stored. Users can then browse visually, and peruse information about each movie via the Media Center interface. S1Digital claims this is the only changer that integrates with Media Center.

Video processors, often called scalers, aren’t a new concept. More than a dozen years ago at a CES show, I borrowed a high-end front projection setup to complement a surround sound demonstration. Runco provided a CRT-based front projector (back then, that technology, now defunct, was really the only game in town for top picture quality).

Wireless streaming video isn’t new, but it has been wrought with images that stutter, lose sync with the audio, or disappear altogether. Understandably most people wouldn’t put up with this. So companies who have been slow to step in with solutions for standard resolution video are even more wary now when it comes to streaming high-def.